The Lover, the Dreamer, and Me.

On June 12, 2017, we became the proud owners of a three-bedroom cave house on Calle Ceuta No. 29 in Galera, Andalucia, Spain. And, yes, it was worth the wait.

The final cost was around $80,000.

This is more than the purchase price (plus 10%) I had originally budgeted for. The extra cost was largely due to the exchange rate which went against us in a bad way the last month of the process. Those little numbers behind the decimal point do make a difference when multiplied thousands of times.

Cueva Encantada was finally ours. Time for pitchers of Sangria and plates of Tapas, framed by a stunning view of the mountains at sunset (see above).

Before that, though, there were some minor, but important repairs that needed seeing to. When the weather is practically perfect, you want to have your windows and front door open to let in the breeze. But, having your living room abuzz with flies is not ideal. Two of our windows needed screens, and the front door needed a set of fly chains. We soon learned the Spanish word for hardware store, ferreteria.

We also decided to have the interior re-plastered and painted. We were not fans of the odd patches of neon blue, green, and pink the former owners had added. The front gate didn’t shut properly, the sunshade over the terrace needed a new cover, and the arbor was drunkenly unstable.  We couldn’t deal with these issues and so enlisted the brilliant Rob the British Builder. And while his prices were very reasonable, these repairs added to the cost.

We also ended up purchasing more furniture than we had hoped. It wasn’t that the former owners didn’t leave us any furniture. The problem lay in the fact that the furniture they did leave was not worth keeping. 5 dogs and 10 cats had left it a bit worse for wear and infested with fleas.

The bites are mostly healed now.

Before we set foot in Spain, we had decided to furnish our cueva with cheerful and cheap furniture from IKEA. Most expat-owned cave houses feature IKEA furnishings. And, this was not our first IKEA rodeo, having frequented IKEA in Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and the USA.

However, the marathon trip to IKEA in Murcia was neither cheap nor pleasant.

Driving three hours (round trip) to visit IKEA is never likely to be fun, and the store’s maze-like design, jumble sale/mini-Scandinavian apartment displays, and the wafting scent of dodgy meatballs and institutional mashed potatoes mixed with fatigue and a monstrous shopping list made it a day best forgotten.

A note about IKEA Murcia: It’s crap.

If this had not been painful enough, the delivery didn’t come for an entire week and when it did come, it was not up to par.

They sent us chairs with missing pieces, and one of the delivery men (independent contractors) put a third chair together wrong, so they had to send us two new chairs.

To get them to do this, I spent more than an hour on hold, over the course of several phone calls, waiting for someone who could speak English well enough to help us. (They have English as a choice on their phone menu, but the line was always answered by someone who couldn’t actually speak English, so I was put on hold while they found someone who could speak English). I did try to communicate with the Customer Service Agent in Spanish, but she refused to believe that I was up to the task.

Eventually, I managed to speak to someone in English and explain the problem. I was told that they would be happy to replace the chairs in just . . .

Another week.

We planned on being roughly 5,000 miles away by then. So, we asked our lovely neighbors if they could take delivery for us. They agreed. And so, we waited.

It took nearly two weeks for them to deliver the chairs because though we clearly told them the name and phone number of our neighbor, they called my cellphone number in the UAE (which was switched off as I wasn’t in the UAE at the time) and could not locate our house in Galera, even though, they had delivered our things to us before.

Without the aid of Rob the Builder, who speaks Spanish beautifully and called IKEA to get it sorted out, we would still be waiting.

We wrote IKEA a letter of 

complaint which they promptly ignored.

 While repairing, cleaning, and furnishing our cueva, we got to know our amazing neighbors and explored the nearby villages a bit (more later).

It was exhausting. Every night, we fell into our beds and were dead to the world. But, at the end of our time in our new cueva, what we mostly felt was sadness that we had to leave.

The view, the sunsets, and the silence of the place are intoxicating. The cueva is enchanting; the great room is sunny, cozy and warm; the bedrooms are dark, cool, and quiet. One sleeps untroubled by noise, light, or heat. As my daughter said, “The cave house cuddles me to sleep at night.”

The lifestyle of late to bed, late to rise, and rambling the stunning countryside with a siesta thrown in the middle, and  little glasses of beer and Sangrita with free small plates of delicious Tapas, often amazing Jamón Serrano or Manchego cheese, is something I cannot imagine tiring of any time soon.

 

 -S